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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Play the Ruy Lopez Mini-Review

Having now spent about a week with IM Andrew Greet's Play the Ruy Lopez, I figured I should post my thoughts on it. In short, if you enjoy playing the Ruy Lopez (a.k.a. the Spanish,) but want to stay away from the enormous amount of theory associated with the main lines, this seems to be the best way to go.

There are lots of original ideas and analysis based mostly on the second or third most popular (but still solid) lines. Everything is well explained and easy to understand...and just about every semi-reasonable response by black is covered! The book is divided into three parts: Part one covers black's third move alternatives (after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5,) part two covers black's fourth move alternatives (following 3...a6 4.Ba4,) and part three focuses on the Worral (4...Nf6 5.Qe2.) Each part is divided into chapters, with a chapter devoted to each of black's systems (Steinitz, Classical, Bird Defence, etc.)

This is the first opening book that I've ever purchased, so I can't give any kind of comparison to other opening books or to any kind of "standard." What I can say is that I'm very happy with the purchase and look forward to getting quite a bit of use out of it. Two thumbs up!

Good list of pet peeves...from what I've read, the majority of opening books hit several if not all seven of those. I'm hoping to see more books from Greet (or at least more of this level of quality) in the future.

I am aware that the book is from White's perspective GP, that is why i asked. I'm interested in reading up on the exchange variation from White's perspective. The regular exchange that is, not the DERLD.

The book doesn't cover the standard exchange variation at all. Since Greet's focus is on the Worrall, the Exchange would be considered an earlier deviation for white...he only covers the deviations for black.

As GP mentioned, he does cover 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 d6 5.Bxf3 bxf3 (Deferred Steinitz,) but that's not entirely comparable to the mainline exchange. By the way, what is DERLD???

4.Bxc6 .. is the exchange variation. If white delays the exchange one move and plays 5.Bxc6 .. it's the Bayreuther variation, named after Alekhine vs Bogoljubov, 1934, 16th matchgame played in Bayreuth. If white only exchanges at move 6 it's called Deferred Exchange Ruy Lopez Delayed (DERLD) or Steenwijker variation, after Euwe vs H Kramer, 1940, played in Steenwijk.

:) I've been really happy with my use of the Qd6 Scandinavian. I don't mind playing the White side of the Qa5 Scandinavian or the Modern Variation, but I've not yet faced the Qd6 variation as White. Let me know when you're ready to give it a go and we'll play a few.